dan rowinski

Finding a Savvy edge

Four games into his return from a Grade 2 concussion, there is still an all points’ bulletin out for the real Marc Savard that the Hub hockey denizens know and love.

That’s not to say his performance in the first four games against the Flyers have been a wash. He scored the dramatic winner in Game 1 and has logged steadily progressing minutes for coach Claude Julien. But for the Bruins to advance past Philadelphia, they’re going to need the point-per-game Savard of yesteryear to step forward and reassert himself.

Which is harder to do than it is to say.

Savard missed two months with the concussion. He can’t be expected to just step back on the ice and be the same playmaker that he was before. It took Patrice Bergeron almost a full year-and-a-half to be the player people recognized from before (granted, his concussion was much worse, and then he sustained another one mid-year last season that set him back a touch).

“I felt good and I banged 24 minutes the other night. I had eight shots, some good chances. My passing was a little off, but other than that I feel really good,” Savard said.

Savard’s 24:17 of ice time in 30 shifts in the Game 4 OT contest was about six minutes more than his previous series high of 17:56 in 22 shifts in the regulation time Game 3. Julien has been steadily trying to ramp up his shifts and responsibility and get his wily playmaker back into the groove of the series.

“Well, he got about 24 in almost a full four periods so, you know, if you cut it down it gives you the indication that he probably would have been around the 18-19 minute mark,” Julien said. “He is on track with everybody else, and I think he was fine. We had most of our players play what I thought were controlled minutes, and he seemed to respond well to those.”

Yet, Julien acknowledged that Savard is not quite where he needs to be yet. The center logged 23 shifts and 15:16 in Game 1 (overtime), 19 shifts and 15:11 in Game 2. Overall, he has a plus/minus ratio of +4 with a goal and two assists, four penalty minutes, 18 shots, 8 shot attempts blocked and three attempts missed. He has held to basically his slightly below average faceoff percentage from the regular season, winning 26 of 54 drops.

The numbers are good — but not stellar — and his six giveaways (against no takeaways) show that he needs to continue on working to get sharper.

“Well, you hope so, because that it what it is all about,” Julien said. “He hasn’t played in a couple of months, so you start him off slowly and you need to see progression in his game. And that comes with time and then he has played more and more now, and not only is his ice time increasing but so is his play. His overall play has to increase as well. It has to get better.”

With David Krejci gone until next season, the onus falls on Savard to start picking up the slack. But that may be a touch unrealistic for a guy about to play his fifth game since March 7. Krejci was a steadily progressing force and had really come on as a dominant playmaker towards the end of the season before the Flyers Mike Richards hit him in Game 3 and he dislocated his wrist.

The eight shots Savard had in Game 4 are kind of an eye-popping stat — not exactly something one would expect from a center. Savard has stepped back into the 17+91+81 mix (this time, it’s Miroslav Satan instead of Phil Kessel on the other side of Lucic), the line Krejci was working with before the injury. Satan has been the hero of the playoffs for the Bruins and it would behoove Savard to feed him a bit more and perhaps shoot a touch less.

It’s not that the eight shots are a bad thing from Savard, — Julien encourages his team to shoot early and often — but some of them may have been misplaced.

“I am not going to complain about it. He can take eight shots every night if he needs to,” Lucic said. “It is good that he is shooting the puck, sometimes he tends to over pass a couple of times but it is never a bad thing to get shots on net and he is more than willing to stop shooting next game and set me and Miro up, that is for sure.”

Julien said that he had not instructed Bergeron and Savard to shoot more now that Krejci is out of the lineup. And the Czech center had only taken 17 shots through nine playoff games anyway, with four goals to show for it. Bergeron has 33 shots through 10 games (a team-high).

“I don’t think we said we are going to shoot more because Krejci is out,” Julien said. “I thought we had over passed when the shot was there and because we over passed the play was broken, and we didn’t have a scoring opportunity off it when he shot the puck we would have had an opportunity. That is something we tell our players is to shoot when the opportunity is there and go after rebounds or tips or whatever it may be. It can also go right through the goaltender. So, you got to take the shot when the shot is there.”

Savard’s primary mission is to get Satan in a position where he can use his superior hand skills to find the net and set Lucic up to make plays in the slot or coming off the half walls. As Savard progresses, this should not be a problem for him.

“They are guys who are used to playing with each other,” Julien said. ”[Lucic] is again coming around, he is a lot stronger on the puck and moving his feet much better, so he has been a much better player to play for us.”

Lucic, Savard’s towering bodyguard, knows it’ll take time for the center to really get back into the flow. Lucic knows injuries this year with a broken finger and high ankle, and said that he has not really regained his stride until basically the last game of the Sabres quarterfinals series. He expects Savard to similarly get better.

“He is getting there. It seems that he is finding his stride more and more. You know, he played pretty good last game,” Lucic said. “He just needs to focus on moving his feet and if he does that, that is always the toughest thing. It took me up until basically now to find my stride but just that simple mindset of keep moving and everything else should fall into place.”

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